[Editors note: Deshan Tennekoon is one of Sri Lanka’s best, young photographers. We are ardent fans, and requested Deshan to send photos that amongst the hundreds taken by him, resonated most with the end of war and the enduring challenges for peace in Sri Lanka.] December 01, 2006. A response to the failed attempt by […]

As we come together to commemorate the anniversary of the end of Sri Lanka’s long and bloody civil war, these are some of the things I remember: I remember hearing reports in late January 2009 of UN workers and their families being shelled by government forces in the Vanni while hiding in bunkers and under […]

I am always wary of write-ups by filmmakers of their films. Labours of love often elicit painful diatribes. The messy, malleable margins of Sri Lanka has long been an issue that many would-be filmmakers have wrestled with yet fail to come to grips. Any attempt to filter its society and polity into a coherent hour […]

killinochchi town getting readyâ€¦ may 2010 19th may. you have nothing to say? i can only falteringly mouth, nothing of â€¦. nothing begets nothing, a king says, and launches a war against garrulous daughters and sulking ones; and i think of an other daughter, too too loud or too soft, of other wars and other […]

In advising political leaders the Italian historian and political advisor Machiavelli (1469-1527) offeredÂ the Â following words which have a relevance to the current predicament of the Sinhala political leadership after the war victory. â€œButÂ when states are acquiredÂ in a province differing in language, in customs, and in institutions, then difficultiesÂ arise; and to hold […]

Fidel quotes a Cuban saying that a man is marked more by his times than his family. My times were shaped by armed conflict: wars, insurrections and counter-insurgency; successive wars in the North and East of the island, two insurrections in the South, against a backdrop of Vietnam, the Middle East, Angola, and Central America. […]

One year after the war ended, when Groundviews invited contributors to contest and complement our understanding that peace is not just the absence of war, or the defeat of the LTTE, we did not expect the response we received. Over the next week, we will publish close to 80,000 words and content from over forty […]

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About Groundviews

Located at the Centre for Policy Alternatives in Colombo, Sri Lanka, Groundviews is a citizen journalism website that uses a range of genres and media to highlight critical perspectives on governance, reconciliation, human rights, the arts and literature, democracy and other issues. The site has won two international awards, including the prestigious Manthan Award South Asia in 2009. The grand jury's evaluation of the site noted, "What no media dares to report, Groundviews publicly exposes. It's a new age media for a new Sri Lanka...Free media at it's very best!"

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